Nukes

When Reagan took office, one of his first announcements was his intent to vastly increase spending on the military. His well-known words of peace through strength became a mantra for his administration. This was followed up with his ideas about nuclear defense which the press promptly ridiculed as star wars. I have always believed that this strategy is what forced Gorbachev to realize that the USSR could not compete with the US on the military stage and led him to his concept of perestroika which meant to concentrate on the economy instead of defense. It was after the fall of the Soviet Union that it was discovered that the Soviets were two generations behind in technology and this explained why they were always opposed to mutual inspections of nuclear sites. I bring this up at this time because of an announcement by Trump today regarding our nuclear arsenal. He said we are going to update both our offensive and defensive capabilities so that no one would consider an attack knowing that their missals would be destroyed before they could reach us and our missals would destroy them. Imagine the look on Putin’s face today when he heard that. Putin knows that Russia has oil, natural gas and obsolete nukes but their economy is in shambles. Trump has been making nice with him and then drops this bomb. Trump is following the Reagan idea of overwhelming the enemy with strength. I am waiting for the press to figure this out which I believe will take a while. Even Krauthammer who is very wise asked today why Trump just didn’t focus on defense. Trump is putting Putin on notice that his nukes will no longer be an effective deterrent. Next he will talk about shipping natural gas to Europe and they will stop buying from Russia.